Article May 24, 1913 Issue

Christian Science is certainly not a faith-cure, and it is...

Herbert M. Beck

Fort Smith (Ark.) Herald

Christian Science is certainly not a faith-cure, and it is not a fad. A fad, the Century dictionary says, is "a trivial fancy; . . . a matter of no importance, or an important matter imperfectly understood, taken up, and urged with more zeal than sense." A well-known lawyer of the highest order, and who was for a number of years a member of the Fort Smith Bar Association, left my office only a few minutes ago, having told me in detail of the most remarkable and entire healing of his sister of a disease which had resisted the efforts of materia medica and surgery for years.

The woman's husband was well-to-do in a business way, and nothing that could be offered in materia medica and surgery had been omitted; yet there was nothing left for the good woman save a life of invalidism, to be lived with such patience as she might find possible. She recovered under Christian Science treatment, and has continued for several years to be a hearty and happy Christian woman, which was impossible until Christian Science came into her life. She does not think Christian Science a "trivial fancy" or "a matter of no importance." As some one had to understand this scientific Christianity well enough to heal her, and as she is now able to heal others by the same spiritual method, no one who has done less can rationally insist that it is "urged with more zeal than sense," or that it is "an important matter imperfectly understood." Christian Scientists are sincere and very much in earnest; they are not faddists.

As to its being a faith-cure, I am wondering how much the critic knows about faith, and if he really knows that there is such a thing as faith-cure. To those who understand faith, it should be told that Christian Science involves the condition of thought which grows out of faith demonstrated. It is faith shown by works. Christian Science is not a mere belief, even to a superlative degree, but is knowledge based upon understanding; it is an understanding of one indestructible and irresistible cause and its immutable relation to effect; an understanding of universally operating Principle, which does not appeal alone to the sentiments, but commands recognition willy-nilly by an appeal to intelligence. It is not faith by which a man knows that two twos are four; it should not be mere faith by which a man knows that God is good; or that, being good, He is omnipotent and omnipresent Spirit. This is not "swinging over" to anything or from anything; it is not swinging at all; it is just the plain statement of a radical truth. Mortals may like it or they may not like it; they can only learn to think and act and live in harmony and accord with it.

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